Pirates and Kawaii! Can Pirates Call Things Cute?
by Giovanna Farina
Summary: How confident is Shanks in his manliness, and will peer pressure cause him to cave? Or will he and a certain tidepool denizen prove that he has nothing to be ashamed of?


"Hehehe. Kawaii!" Captain Shanks grinned and held up a small hermit crab he'd found wandering around the beach, examining it up close.

"Why Cap'n, you brought us dinner. How thoughtful." Lucky Roux tried to snatch the crab from Shanks, who promptly pulled it back towards him, causing it to hide in its shell.

"How dare you," he huffed, releasing his catch to the ocean where it couldn't fall prey to the hands of any nasty pirates...at least, not the ones on HIS ship.

"I dare because it's a CRAB. It's not CUTE."

"Of course it's cute! You wouldn't know cute if you saw it anyhow."

"Unless it were a wench he was referring to," Yasopp mused.

Lucky Roux ignored the sniper's comment and raised an eye at Shanks. "You're a pirate captain. That makes you more ignorant of "kawaii" than I am."

"Apparently not," the captain said with a haughty sniff.

"Yes, apparently." Lucky Roux rolled his eyes. "How do you expect to become a great pirate if you think everything's cute?"

"I do NOT think everything's cute. I don't think booze is cute, nor do I think blood and limbs flying everywhere is cute, or rookies getting seasick in the middle of the ship because of awful swells. Who would think that's cute?!"

"I would!" cried Yasopp. The others looked over at him. His eyes and face were red and he had a giddy expression. He was clearly drunk, which wasn't too unusual.

Shanks watched the sniper for a moment as he tried to recover the train of thought Yasopp had caused to wreck. Then he turned back to Lucky Roux and continued, "...AND I don't think any of the guys on my ship are cute."

"I DO!" Yasopp cried once more, earning him a sock in the gut which made his bottle go flying. He shrieked and went scrambling after it.

Lucky Roux raised an eyebrow at Shanks. "Well. Some pirate, thinking things are cute. How can you even call yourself a buccaneer?"

"What are you trying to say? Are you saying that calling a hermit crab cute makes me less of a pirate?!"

"It seems that way, doesn't it?"

Shanks became outraged. "You know what I ought to do?! I ought to demote you. Demote you to cabin boy! That's what I ought to do!"

Benn Beckman looked up from his dark corner where he was reading his book (or at least trying to) and eyed the others. "Demotion for speaking honestly? Sounds a bit harsh."

"...And I'll make Yasopp my new first mate too!"

"Alright! Whooo!" Yasopp cheered weakly, sucking the last few drops out of his bottle.

"C'mon, Beckman, is it really that strange to think a hermit crab's cute?" Shanks appealed to his first mate.

"I suppose not if you're hermit crab." Benn's response sent Lucky Roux into a fit of laughter.

"Har har. Well you remember that little puppy we saw the other day? You agreed with me when I said it was cute." Shanks pointed an incriminating finger at him.

"If the crab had the same appearance as a puppy, I still might. MIGHT."

"Yeah, I suppose it might depend on if it still had that practice of picking the meat off of dead seagulls, leaving them as nothing but a fragile skeleton." Lucky Roux said in a chilling voice.

"The puppy or the crab?" Shanks stared at him in confusion.

"The CRAB, you idiot," Lucky Roux and Benn said nearly in unison.

"Wait...who said THAT was cute?!" Shanks' mind was going in several places at once.

"You implied it. By saying a hermit crab was cute."

"Hermit crebs? I love crebs. They're so furgging d'lishus drenched with butter." Yasopp slurred in a happy drunken stupor. Lucky Roux dragged him off to a corner where he could recover by himself but could still hear what was going on then came back.

"You know, he's right," Benn told Shanks, nodding towards Lucky Roux.

Shanks groaned. "Do I really have to be THAT specific? Don't answer that, I already know what the answer is." He paused to take a breath before continuing. "Okay. I, in my own personal private mind, think that it's funny and kawaii that hermit crabs are tiny and walk funny and have big shells on tiny bodies. Now do any of you cynics find anything strange, objectionable, uncanny or bizarre about that?" He raised an eyebrow at his challengers.

Lucky Roux, Benn, and Yasopp all paused, drinking in the mental picture Shanks had so eloquently painted for them.

Finally Lucky Roux conceded, as the representative voice of all three of them, "Well, I guess in some ways that could be considered somewhat cute."


End file.
